Well, I guess they've gotta spend all that money they get on something.
"The Russian government just made it a crime for gay people to show their love in public", the video claims, falsely.
All Out's press release admits this claim is untrue - or rather says it is "unclear" ie it's not what the new propaganda law actually says.
When there are so many anti-gay things going on in Russia, why say you're against something that hasn't happened?
The video imagines a female ice-skater who gets a gold medal but can't kiss her girlfriend in celebration.
Imagine if a gay man won an Olympic gold medal and thanked and embraced his boyfriend!
Just like Matthew Mitcham did in 2008, you mean?
US TV networks edited out all mentions of his then boyfriend, Lachlan Fletcher.
And what reassurance is the trite title and message here, Love Always Wins, when gay and bisexual men are being beaten up after being found through gay sex sites on the internet?
Similarly the new law against "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations to minors" - and the rhetoric behind it - seems most concerned with propagating the myth that gay men prey on kids.
It is a grave tactical error to reduce this campaign to gay love, when Russian homophobes keep going on about gay SEX.
If we base our arguments on mendacity, tomfoolery, and most of all on prudery - and willingly submitting to our castration as gay men - they have won.
Remember: If you think this short film is a load of silly old sentimental wank that only serves Western power, that means you DON'T CARE and are WORSE THAN HITLER!
All Out believe there is "an anti-gay war waging in Russia" right now.
Well, it's always good to keep things in perspective.
And if history has shown us there's one sure-fire way to stop a war, it's by asking people to click on an e-petition.
Or alternatively why not ask some celebrities to wear a crappy t-shirt?
That'll learn 'em!
PS Human Rights Campaign - America's largest/wealthiest gay organisation - has come up with the inspired "campaign" to get famous Americans to support LGBT Russians by wearing a t-shirt.
HRC have been given $3 million to spread the gay word across the world.
Scott Long writes on HRC and the Vulture Fund: Making Third World poverty pay for LGBT rights.
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The complete erasure of any mention or notion of sex in "activism" seems to me to be part of this whole co-opting of gay rights by a sort of middle class conservative respectability politics.
ReplyDeleteWhereas once I think the pre-eminent drive in gay rights was for the right to fuck who you want without the state or any other homophobic cunt telling you you can't, now it's about being respectable (middle class), so all mention of sex is jettisoned in favour of "love" and the whole gay rights movement - as you've railed against on here many times - has become solely about consumerism, marriage, tax breaks, etc.
It's also that mindset I think that so easily dismisses the LGBT people in other countries and the views/wishes of activists there. It feeds into the middle-class respectable conservative crapfest to be seen to be doing something about it from afar (boycotting shit, signing e-petitions), but beyond that set the actual lives, feelings, actions and wishes of those people seem to have little worth to them.
And the focus on love all the time is almost always so fucking sentimental. Sentimentality is false - I think DH Lawrence said sentimentality was masturbating over feelings no one in real life has ever felt (or something like that). And that's what it is, it seems to me, emotional masturbation - which is more respectable than actual masturbation, clearly...